Time to finish
the greatest
unbuilt building

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What was the greatest unbuilt building of the 20th century? To my mind there is no doubt: Edward Lutyens’s Roman Catholic cathedral, designed for Liverpool in 1932. The Archdiocese had bought a site on a hill half a mile from Giles Gilbert Scott’s Anglican cathedral, begun 30 years earlier. The intention (as the relevant volume of Pevsner’s Buildings of England puts it) was that “the two great churches would crown the skyline”. Work on the crypt ran from 1933 to 1941 – but the rest of the edifice remains in our imaginations.

It would’ve dwarfed Liverpool’s other cathedral; perhaps that was the point

Those imaginings are, however, well-informed: the Museum of Liverpool houses a gigantic model of what it would have looked like, and numerous drawings exist of Lutyens’s plans. The building, of local red sandstone with white stone dressings, would have been massive: 680ft long, with a 300ft high dome on top of a soaring crossing taking the total height to 510ft, more than 100ft higher than the tallest Anglican cathedral, Salisbury. It would have dwarfed Liverpool’s other cathedral, but perhaps that was the point.

However, the Second World War brought work on the building to an end. Lutyens died in 1944, and Archbishop Downey, whose idea the project was, died in 1953. His successor, Archbishop Godfrey, decided the estimated £27 million cost of completing the design was too much.

In 1959, a competition was held to build a more modest cathedral above Lutyens’s crypt. It was won by Sir Frederick Gibberd, whose design resembled a big circular tent with a huge funnel poking out of it.

Its design was mocked as “Paddy’s Wigwam”, in reference to the large number of Roman Catholics of Irish descent who worshipped there

Sadly for the people of Liverpool, the construction exemplified the school of cheap and nasty. The cathedral started to leak as soon as it was opened; its design was mocked as “Paddy’s Wigwam”, in reference to the large number of Roman Catholics of Irish descent who worshipped there.

The cathedral is now clad in glass-reinforced plastic, the original off-white mosaic that faced the building having rotted quickly and proved impossible to repair.

Given the vast wealth of the Catholic Church, I should have thought a better solution was at hand: demolish this ugly and absurd building, and build Lutyens’s instead. This would have two favourable consequences: Liverpool would become a place of international pilgrimage for both Roman Catholics and aesthetes, and the building’s construction would give every unemployed person in the area a job for decades. It would lift the whole city.

For the time being, Liverpool does have the consolation of accommodating the greatest building in Britain of the past century: the Anglican cathedral. When, in 1903, Giles Gilbert Scott won the competition to build this magnificent church, which sits on a hill above the Mersey, he was just 22. He was the scion of an illustrious family: his grandfather was Sir George Gilbert Scott, who built the Midland Hotel at St Pancras (possibly the finest building of the Victorian age) and much else.

Although the judges were impressed by Scott’s design (which, in the style of many French cathedrals, included two towers rather than just one), they decided, because of his youth, to appoint GF Bodley – who had been trained by Scott’s grandfather, and was one of the most admired church builders of the late 19th century – as joint architect. The old man and his young collaborator agreed on little once building began in 1904, but Bodley died in 1907, allowing Scott free rein thereafter. Scott immediately embarked on a redesign that replaced the original pair of towers with a single one, and created the great, austere Gothic silhouette that broods over the river today.

Pevsner called Scott’s cathedral “the final flowering of the Gothic Revival as a vital, creative movement”. It was fortunate to have been built at a time when Liverpool was still prosperous, and corners did not have to be cut as they were with its Catholic neighbour. The building is overpowering from outside, but this is nothing compared with the might of the impression made on the visitor when one goes inside. The height, proportions and materials combine to give a properly spiritual experience. It was not finished until 1978. Let us hope Liverpool’s Catholics might take a similarly long view, and have the optimism to set about finishing Lutyens’s finest work as he intended.